Hard to Read
by LadyVegeets
Summary: Vegeta can be a little hard to read at times...Good thing Bulma is an expert at reading between the lines. (A fluffy three-year gap oneshot to celebrate the holidays.)


**Hard to Read**

The sweat on Vegeta's skin was cooled by the crisp evening air; 'fall' the woman had called it — "Because of the falling leaves, see?"

It was Vegeta's first time experiencing seasons, having never been on a planet long enough before — if other planets even underwent such changes. The cool air was a welcomed reprieve after training all day in the gravity ship.

A delicious smell was beckoning him across the Capsule Corporation grounds towards the kitchen. Vegeta slid open the back door and let himself in, finding dinner waiting for him as usual, no doubt thanks to that Panchy woman.

She'd outdone herself tonight. The biggest avian carcass he'd ever seen rested on a silver platter in the middle of the kitchen counter. The skin was roasted to a crackled caramelized brown and the bird stuffed with a delicious cacophony of carbohydrates and herbs. Various other dishes surrounded it, piled with vegetables, sauces, and freshly baked buns. Vegeta's stomach took over and he pulled up his usual barstool, dragging the massive bird platter across the counter to sit right in front of him. He ripped off one of the thighs and began wolfing down the meal.

He was about a third of the way through the bird when he heard _her_. No, it wasn't just her. There were others.

Ugh. Company. _Great._

His shoulders tensed as Bulma entered the kitchen chatting to what passed for as 'Earth's best fighters'. Ha!

The group was dressed surprisingly well, not a gi in sight. Bulma was especially put together in a soft sweater-dress that hugged her curves and cut off high on her thighs, allowing his eyes to drink in her long legs. She was laughing and smiling at something Yamcha had said, looking absolutely radiant. His brow pulled down, gut writhing with a black snake of loathing.

"Aw Vegeta, you started without us?" Goku's voice cut through the other chatter. "That's not fair."

Every single eye in the room turned on him where he sat, all sweaty and only half-dressed in his training gear, hunched over his meal like some feral hungry stray. For the first time in a long time, Vegeta felt very underdressed.

Bulma froze upon seeing him, her eyes widening before quickly filling with a fury he'd rarely witnessed in her. Sure, he'd seen her angry before — many _many _times before — but that was nothing compared to the storm now brewing in the blue-haired earthling.

"Vegeta, what the HELL?!" she exclaimed, marching over to snatch up the platter from under him. She could barely handle the weight of the huge bird and almost dropped the meal, catching it at the last moment with a curse of frustration. "Damnit! Are you freaking kidding me? This is for everyone, you jerk! How could you be so selfish, mom slaved over this for days!"

Still holding a half-eaten bird leg in his hand, Vegeta felt his own anger awaken in the face of hers. He didn't much care for publicly humiliation. "How the fuck was I supposed to know?"

Bulma dropped the platter on the dining table (which he only now noticed was decked out in a table cloth and covered in fine plates and cutlery, with little decorative gourds strewn about). She rounded back on him with an accusatory finger. "Oh, I dunno, maybe one of those notes I left for you might have given you a clue?"

Ah. The notes. _Fuck_.

He made an agitated sound and turned away, trying to dismiss her. "I have better things to do than read your goddamn novellas."

"Don't you dare," she rebutted, coming over and jabbing her index finger against his shoulder. "I asked you this morning if you got them, and you said yes!"

He glared out of the corner of his eyes. "I said I_ got_ them. I never said I _read_ them."

"Are you serious?" she repeated, her voice rising dangerously. Her eyes ran over him, her cheeks flushing. "Well I guess that's obvious, because if you had you wouldn't be looking like that. God, you're a mess!"

"I was _training_."

"Training to be an asshole. I _told_ you today was a special day!"

"Bulma, let's just be thankful there's still plenty of food to go around." Krillin nervously tried to mitigate the situation. "It was a silly misunderstanding, _right_ Vegeta?" the monk asked, giving him a pleading look.

_Him_. Vegeta. Prince of all Saiyans, being pleaded with by a creature whom he could crush under his thumb.

Not fucking likely.

"The only misunderstanding was agreeing to stay here in the first place." Vegeta pushed out of the chair, but Bulma was still in his way. He glared down the length of his nose at her. "I'll see myself out," he growled. "Would hate for my mess to ruin your special day." He shoved around her to leave.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" she huffed after him.

"Anywhere but here."

"Uh, Bulma, maybe we should just let him go…" Yamcha tried to interject.

She clearly didn't take scar-face's advise as he felt her hand grab his wrist. "Vegeta, wait."

There was a collective intake of air as the whole gang sucked in their breaths, fearful of his reaction to being touched.

Pathetic, all of them. She was braver than the lot of them, he had to give her that. He glared at her over his shoulder. "What?"

"Aren't you staying?" she asked.

"Why the hell would I?" he snapped. He was _done_ with this whole fiasco and wanted to leave it — and her — behind.

"Because I invited you." She said with exasperation.

_Invited?_

She searched his eyes, and he must not have been very good at hiding his confusion, because she prompted. "The notes?"

Fuck. He looked away with a grimace. "I have better things to do with my time than read your—"

"Vegeta…Can you even read?"

The silence was deafening.

Rooted to the spot, Vegeta felt every single eye latched onto him. The whole universe came to a stop.

His gaze turned cold and hostile, and he snatched his hand out from under her grip. "Of course I can fucking read."

Bulma was looking at him too intensely, unaware of the danger her line of questioning was putting her in. "Really? Then what does this say?" She pointed to a calendar on the wall nearest them.

Vegeta's hands fisted at his sides; the bird leg he still held snapped in his fingers. "I am not a pet. I don't do tricks."

"It's one word, Vegeta. It's hardly a trick. Read it. Prove me wrong. What does it say?"

Vegeta glared at the calendar's large font, hateful of every single one of the foreign letters that stared indiscernibly back at him. A mortifying heat crawled up his neck and turned his face red.

"Holy shit, he really can't read," someone whispered in the background.

"Even _Goku_ can read."

His eyes flickered up but he couldn't spot the culprits in time. Not that it mattered. They were _all_ judging him. All _laughing _at him.

Bulma lowered her arm, her eyes sad. Pitying. "Why didn't you tell me? Illiteracy is nothing to be ashamed of—"

"I am _not ashamed_!" He took a threatening step forward, so angry his voice and fists shook. "And I'm not illiterate! I can read Saiyanand Imperial _perfectly_. What need have I for your pathetic Earth scribbles? Your planet can't even agree on one universal script. As far as I'm concerned, it would be a wasted effort to learn yours seeing as I intend to blow this shit-hole up and everyone still on it!"

He threw down the crushed bird leg at her feet and turned on his heels, storming off down the hall.

* * *

~xox~

The fall air had grown cold, and the stars bright. Vegeta sat on Capsule Corp.'s roof and contemplated the events of his life that had brought him here. No home, no people, no revenge, no legendary, and now no respect from a race he'd been forced to throw his lot in with just to survive. He wasn't sure his pride could take much more beating down.

He sensed her approach, and tried to ignore her as she climbed the ladder and sat down at his right.

"Holy shit, it's cold out here." She said by way of greeting.

He said nothing.

"I brought you some dinner." She held a large container towards him. He was about to reject it when he noticed something written on the lid. It was his name. In _Imperial_.

How the…?

He glanced up at her.

She gave him a lopsided smile. "I got it off Raditz's old scouter. Did I spell it right?"

Aggravating resourceful woman. He sighed and took the container.

"I'm really sorry, Vegeta. I should have realized you wouldn't be able to read our language. I just assumed that, since you speak it, we would have the same alphabet. You really should have told me otherwise."

"Never tell your enemy your weaknesses," he scoffed, absent-mindedly tracing his thumb over his name.

She gave him a sad look. "Is that what you still think of us as?"

"_Everyone_ is an enemy. To think otherwise is to court your own demise." He looked at her, and when he saw the hurt in her eyes he almost felt guilty. He looked away with a frown. "Don't take it personally."

"Yeah. Right."

They lapsed into silence. She tugged her sleeves down to cover her fingers. He noticed her breath fogging in front of her, her body trembling in the cool night. His scowl deepened. "Go back inside. You have guests to attend."

She shrugged. "It's calmer out here. And if I have to hear one more baseball story from Yamcha, I'm going to beat him to death with the rest of the turkey."

The corner of his mouth curled up. He set the container on his lap and opened it up — it even had plastic utensils inside. He started eating the meal, subtly raising his ki in an attempt to stop Bulma from shivering so much.

"How is it?" she asked.

"Mm."

Scooting closer, she leaned over the container. "Can I have some stuffing?"

"Which ones are stuffing?"

"The bread parts."

"Fuck off, those are delicious."

"I know, that's why you're going to share." She reached for his fork.

He held the container out of reach. "Get your own stuffing!"

"Don't be such a jerk, Vegeta!"

She half climbed into his lap to reach for the meal, teetering dangerously on her knees. Some instinctual drive had him put his hand at the small of her back to keep her from toppling off the roof. It meant he lost the battle over his food too.

Bulma made a happy sound as she popped some stuffing into her mouth. "Mmm!"

He huffed and shoved the container at her. "Just eat it all then."

"'Kay."

She settled back at his side, much closer this time, her legs still propped over his and her head nuzzled to his arm. He tolerated it, feeling every inch of the contact radiate throughout him.

"What's so special about today anyway?" he asked.

"It's called Thanksgiving," she told him as she dug at the meal. "It's a sort of harvest festival. And we're supposed to reflect on what we're grateful for."

He frowned, his mouth turning down bitterly, remembering all his failures. Not much to really be grateful for there. "That must be nice," he snarked. "Especially when you have so much." He waved his hand, gesturing towards her large estate.

Bulma looked down, pushing the food around with her fork. "Well, yes, I suppose I am luckier than most. But it's not really about _stuff_. Mostly, I'm grateful we all survived Namek. And…I'm grateful _you're_ here."

He gave her a hard side-eyed, filled with cynicism. "You don't need to flatter me. You are not my target. Take your family and fly off this planet before I blow it up, and I will not hunt you down."

"Uh… thanks? But I'm not trying to butter you up. I really mean it. It's nice to have you around. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the guys don't come over very much, and when they do, well, we don't exactly have a lot in common. It gets pretty lonely most days. So…yeah, I'm grateful for your company, Vegeta."

He stared at her, but she was too busy playing with the food to return his look. Now that she mentioned it, he rarely saw guests at the house, especially after the Namekians had left. Even Yamcha barely showed up these days, ever since that big argument he and bulma had gotten into a while back.

Vegeta looked back out at the stars. Being thankful, huh? Well, at the very least, he was alive. That was more than most people could say after fighting Frieza. And while it wasn't by his hand directly that the tyrant had fallen, Vegeta had still helped bring that bastard down. That was something to be grateful for. And he had a new goal now, and a safe place to pursue it. Not just a safe place, but a place where the climate, food, and accommodations were more than adequate.

He glanced at Bulma, taking in her delicate features and the warmth her company brought him that had nothing to do with body temperature. If he was being really honest with himself, he supposed the company here wasn't too terrible either. He knew from experience it could be much _much_ worse, so he was definitely grateful for that.

"Do you have something to write with?" he asked.

She looked up at him with big eyes, surprised he had broken the silence on his own. "Um…would lipstick do?"

"Good enough."

She handed over her lipstick and then had to help him figure out how to open it, so he could write on the container lid beneath the Imperial text.

"What's that say?" she asked.

"It's my name, in Saiyan."

"Ooh, it's really pretty," she murmured, admiring the lines. "Can you do mine?"

He had to think for a moment how to translate her name into his dead language, but finally scratched it out in red.

"It looks much prettier than the Imperial," she observed.

He swelled a little with pride.

Bulma put the food aside and took back her lipstick to translate both their names into English script. "Ve-ge-ta. Bul-ma," she enunciated for his benefit as she wrote out the letters. "Hey, I never noticed that before, but both our names end with an 'a'."

He said nothing, staring at their names side by side in the two languages.

"HEY BULMA! WE'RE ABOUT TO HAVE PIE!" Goku called up to them from the back garden, waving his arm high above his head. "HEY VEGETA. DO YOU WANT PIE?"

"FUCK OFF, KAKAROT!" he snarled back.

Bulma sighed and started to untangle herself from him. "I should go back in. You coming?"

"Fuck no."

"Suit yourself."

Bulma dusted herself off and started heading back towards the ladder. She paused on the landing. "Hey, Vegeta?"

He looked over at her, still holding their names in his hand.

"Happy Thanksgiving."

He frowned and tsked and looked away, but he tracked her ki all the way down until she was safely back inside.

~xoXox~

* * *

**AN:** I realize this is specifically Thanksgiving but I think the message/ideals applies for most holidays - to be grateful for what you have, to share a special day with loved ones, and to celebrate peace, harmony, understanding, and camaraderie with your fellow man (or alien).

Happy Holidays everyone! xoxo


End file.
